JEvent was planning to add the capability of loading ICS for 1.6, but we are running 1.5 and we seem to fade it out instead of upgrading it. It is better anyway for clients use their personal communication environment to personalize the events they need to know about, instead of going to a one-size-fits-all website. So we are removing this menu item. Here is how:

In the Joomla Administrator Control Panel, click on the Menu Manager:

Locate the menu item that you want to remove in the hierarchy.

Open the Menu item – from here you can

either “unpublish” the menu

or, lest you confuse your users, change the type to a page and post an explanation and directions where users can get the information they want in a better way.

replace the Calendar by an Article, then choose first the article format, then the article (article has to exist, you have to author it before editing the menu):

You can save the currently loaded calendars as a preset or “group” from the ribbon in the calendar view of outlook 2010, like so:

The group and its members will be added to your calendar tree, and you can load all members with one click, like so:

Then you can create multiple presets which correspond to your typical workflows: E.g. when you do not have to check the availability of equivalent sets of equipment, you may want to have an easy overview of staffing in the LRC:

Note that – while we have to load individually the calendars of other mailboxes we own –, calendar groups we create in Outlook are automagically mirrored in OWA

But the calendar names get lost in the process? And: the batch select checkbox is missing. And: only up to 5 calendars can be viewed in OWA simultaneously. And: OWA does not support overlay mode for calendars.):

It would be great if calendar groups, with the help of ActiveSync, even worked their way through to mobile devices, but apparently they do not:

The LRC needs an overview aggregate calendar of its many rooms and services for clients in the entrance area. This should be always on display on the higher one of the reception area dual screen computers when screens are in extended mode

From the calendar mailbox in OWA , these calendars can and have been published to the internet.

LRC assistants can load and bookmark multiple (published or shared) calendars in their OWA, but there are limitations

We do not want to clutter LRC Assistants OWA with LRC calendars more than we have to.

OWA displays calendars (currently = 2011) only side-by-side, there is no overlay (=aggregate) mode like in Outlook 2010, and only up to 5 simultaneously, again unlike Outlook 2010 (30) (Students do not have Outlook (although it is being considered installing it on student staffed computers).

A standard web browser allows for display of only one (HTML) calendar at a time in a web browser.

To have LRC assistants easily and consistently load this aggregate calendar view,

we need to give tutors the password to uncc-lrc credentials – being “friends” not enough (which makes their own access to SkyDrive which we finally achieved yesterday useless – unless they log in as themselves and as uncc-lrc in 2 different browsers)

However, I have not found a way to aggregate calendar ics files and display them without password (ideally in Joomla)

Workaround: use a AutoIT auotmation script that runs when LRC Assistant logs in form the All users Startup Folder.

If you run into problems playing a DVD video – either since there is no (non-free up to Windows XP) DVD-decoder installed on your computer, or since the DVD was not mastered properly for your DVD-playing software – and if you have VideoLan VLC-Player installed – like on the teacher computer in the LRC main classroom–, you can work around these issues by right-clicking on the Video_TS.vob file – which you will presumably find in the Video_TS subfolder if you browse your DVD as a disk with Windows Explorer (usually drive D: – you may haveto bypass your default DVDS playing software to get in there– and choose from the context menu either directly to “Play with VLC” or via “Open with”, like in this screenshot: